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<h1>O</h1>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">oath</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> In law, a
solemn appeal to the Deity, made binding upon the conscience by a penalty for
perjury.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">oblivion</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> The
state or condition in which the wicked cease from struggling and the dreary are
at rest. Fame’s eternal dumping ground. Cold storage for high hopes. A place
where ambitious authors meet their works without pride and their betters
without envy. A dormitory without an alarm clock.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">observatory</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A
place where astronomers conjecture away the guesses of their predecessors.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">obsessed,</span> <span class="pos">p.p.</span> Vexed
by an evil spirit, like the Gadarene swine and other critics. Obsession was once
more common than it is now. Arasthus tells of a peasant who was occupied by a
different devil for every day in the week, and on Sundays by two. They were
frequently seen, always walking in his shadow, when he had one, but were
finally driven away by the village notary, a holy man; but they took the
peasant with them, for he vanished utterly. A devil thrown out of a woman by
the Archbishop of Rheims ran through the trees, pursued by a hundred persons,
until the open country was reached, where by a leap higher than a church spire
he escaped into a bird. A chaplain in Cromwell’s army exorcised a soldier’s
obsessing devil by throwing the soldier into the water, when the devil came to
the surface. The soldier, unfortunately, did not.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">obsolete</span>, <span class="pos">adj.</span> No longer
used by the timid. Said chiefly of words. A word which some lexicographer has
marked obsolete is ever thereafter an object of dread and loathing to the fool
writer, but if it is a good word and has no exact modern equivalent equally
good, it is good enough for the good writer. Indeed, a writer’s attitude toward
“obsolete” words is as true a measure of his literary ability as anything
except the character of his work. A dictionary of obsolete and obsolescent
words would not only be singularly rich in strong and sweet parts of speech; it
would add large possessions to the vocabulary of every competent writer who
might not happen to be a competent reader.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">obstinate</span>, <span class="pos">adj.</span> Inaccessible
to the truth as it is manifest in the splendor and stress of our advocacy.</p>

<p>The popular type and exponent of obstinacy is the mule, a most intelligent animal.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">occasional</span>, <span class="pos">adj.</span> Afflicting us with
greater or less frequency. That, however, is not the sense in which the word is used in the phrase
“occasional verses,” which are verses written for an “occasion,” such as an anniversary, a celebration or
other event. True, they afflict us a little worse than other sorts of verse, but their name has no reference to
irregular recurrence.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">occident</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> The
part of the world lying west (or east) of the Orient. It is largely inhabited
by Christians, a powerful subtribe of the Hypocrites, whose principal
industries are murder and cheating, which they are pleased to call “war” and
“commerce.” These, also, are the principal industries of the Orient.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">ocean</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A body
of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man—who has no gills.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">offensive</span>, <span class="pos">adj.</span> Generating
disagreeable emotions or sensations, as the advance of an army against its enemy.</p>

<p>“Were the enemy’s tactics offensive?” the king asked. “I should say so!” replied the unsuccessful
general. “The blackguard wouldn’t come out of his works!”</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">old</span>, <span class="pos">adj.</span> In that
stage of usefulness which is not inconsistent with general inefficiency, as an <i>old man</i>. Discredited by lapse of time and
offensive to the popular taste, as an <i>old</i>
book.</p>

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">“Old books? The devil take them!” Goby said.</p>
<p class="poetry">“Fresh every day must be my books and bread.”</p>
<p class="poetry">Nature herself approves the Goby rule</p>
<p class="poetry">And gives us every moment a fresh fool.</p>
<p class="citeauth">Harley Shum</p>
</div>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">oleginous</span>, <span class="pos">adj.</span> Oily,
smooth, sleek.</p>

<p>Disraeli once described the manner of Bishop Wilberforce as “unctuous, oleaginous,
saponaceous.” And the good prelate was ever afterward known as Soapy Sam. For
every man there is something in the vocabulary that would stick to him like a
second skin. His enemies have only to find it.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">Olympian</span>, <span class="pos">adj.</span> Relating
to a mountain in Thessaly, once inhabited by gods, now a repository of
yellowing newspapers, beer bottles and mutilated sardine cans, attesting the
presence of the tourist and his appetite.</p>

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">His name the smirking tourist scrawls</p>
<p class="poetry">Upon Minerva’s temple walls,</p>
<p class="poetry">Where thundered once Olympian Zeus,</p>
<p class="poetry">And marks his appetite’s abuse.</p>
<p class="citeauth">Averil Joop</p>
</div>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">omen</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A sign
that something will happen if nothing happens.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">once</span>, <span class="pos">adv.</span> Enough.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">opera</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A play
representing life in another world, whose inhabitants have no speech but song,
no motions but gestures and no postures but attitudes. All acting is
simulation, and the word <i>simulation</i> is from <i>simia</i>, an ape; but in
opera the actor takes for his model <i>Simia audibilis</i> (or <i>Pithecanthropos
stentor</i>)&#8212;the ape that howls.</p>

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">The actor apes a man—at least in shape;</p>
<p class="poetry">The opera performer apes and ape.</p>
</div>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">Opiate</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> An
unlocked door in the prison of Identity. It leads into the jail yard.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">opportunity</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A
favorable occasion for grasping a disappointment.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">oppose</span>, <span class="pos">v.</span> To
assist with obstructions and objections.</p>

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">How lonely he who thinks to vex</p>
<p class="poetry">With bandinage the Solemn Sex!</p>
<p class="poetry">Of levity, Mere Man, beware;</p>
<p class="poetry">None but the Grave deserve the Unfair.</p>
<p class="citeauth">Percy P. Orminder</p>
</div>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">opposition</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> In
politics the party that prevents the Government from running amuck by hamstringing it.</p>

<p>The King of Ghargaroo, who had been abroad to study the science of government, appointed
one hundred of his fattest subjects as members of a parliament to make laws for
the collection of revenue. Forty of these he named the Party of Opposition and
had his Prime Minister carefully instruct them in their duty of opposing every
royal measure. Nevertheless, the first one that was submitted passed unanimously.
Greatly displeased, the King vetoed it, informing the Opposition that if they
did that again they would pay for their obstinacy with their heads. The entire
forty promptly disemboweled themselves.</p>

<p>“What shall we do now?” the King asked. “Liberal institutions cannot be maintained without a
party of Opposition.”</p>

<p>“Splendor of the universe,” replied the Prime Minister, “it is true these dogs of darkness have
no longer their credentials, but all is not lost. Leave the matter to this worm of the dust.”</p>

<p>So the Minister had the bodies of his Majesty’s Opposition embalmed and stuffed with straw, put
back into the seats of power and nailed there. Forty votes were recorded
against every bill and the nation prospered. But one day a bill imposing a tax
on warts was defeated—the members of the Government party had not been nailed
to their seats! This so enraged the King that the Prime Minister was put to
death, the parliament was dissolved with a battery of artillery, and government
of the people, by the people, for the people perished from Ghargaroo.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">optimism</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> The
doctrine, or belief, that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly,
everything good, especially the bad, and everything right that is wrong. It is
held with greatest tenacity by those most accustomed to the mischance of
falling into adversity, and is most acceptably expounded with the grin that
apes a smile. Being a blind faith, it is inaccessible to the light of
disproof—an intellectual disorder, yielding to no treatment but death. It is
hereditary, but fortunately not contagious.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">optimist</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A proponent of the
doctrine that black is white.</p>

<p>A pessimist applied to God for relief.</p>
<p>“Ah, you wish me to restore your hope and cheerfulness,” said God.</p>
<p>“No,” replied the petitioner, “I wish you to create something that would justify them.”</p>
<p>“The world is all created,” said God, “but you have overlooked something—the mortality of the optimist.”</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">oratory</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A
conspiracy between speech and action to cheat the understanding. A tyranny
tempered by stenography.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">orphan</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A
living person whom death has deprived of the power of filial ingratitude—a
privation appealing with a particular eloquence to all that is sympathetic in
human nature. When young the orphan is commonly sent to an asylum, where by
careful cultivation of its rudimentary sense of locality it is taught to know
its place. It is then instructed in the arts of dependence and servitude and
eventually turned loose to prey upon the world as a bootblack or scullery maid.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">orthodox</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> An ox
wearing the popular religious joke.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">orthography</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> The
science of spelling by the eye instead of the ear. Advocated with more heat
than light by the outmates of every asylum for the insane. They have had to
concede a few things since the time of Chaucer, but are none the less hot in
defence of those to be conceded hereafter.</p>

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">A spelling reformer indicted</p>
<p class="poetry">For fudge was before the court cicted.</p>
<p class="poetry">The judge said: “Enough—</p>
<p class="poetry">His candle we’ll snough,</p>
<p class="poetry">And his sepulchre shall not be whicted.”</p>
</div>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">ostrich</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A large
bird to which (for its sins, doubtless) nature has denied that hinder toe in
which so many pious naturalists have seen a conspicuous evidence of design. The
absence of a good working pair of wings is no defect, for, as has been
ingeniously pointed out, the ostrich does not fly.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">otherwise</span>, <span class="pos">adv.</span> No better.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">outcome</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A
particular type of disappointment. By the kind of intelligence that sees in an
exception a proof of the rule the wisdom of an act is judged by the outcome,
the result. This is immortal nonsense; the wisdom of an act is to be juded by
the light that the doer had when he performed it.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">outdo</span>, <span class="pos">v.t.</span> To
make an enemy.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">out-of-doors</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> That
part of one’s environment upon which no government has been able to collect
taxes. Chiefly useful to inspire poets.</p>

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">I climbed to the top of a mountain one day</p>
<p class="poetry">To see the sun setting in glory,</p>
<p class="poetry">And I thought, as I looked at his vanishing ray,</p>
<p class="poetry">Of a perfectly splendid story.</p>
<p class="poetry">‘Twas about an old man and the ass he bestrode</p>
<p class="poetry">Till the strength of the beast was o’ertested;</p>
<p class="poetry">Then the man would carry him miles on the road</p>
<p class="poetry">Till Neddy was pretty well rested.</p>
<p class="poetry">The moon rising solemnly over the crest</p>
<p class="poetry">Of the hills to the east of my station</p>
<p class="poetry">Displayed her broad disk to the darkening west</p>
<p class="poetry">Like a visible new creation.</p>
<p class="poetry">And I thought of a joke (and I laughed till I cried)</p>
<p class="poetry">Of an idle young woman who tarried</p>
<p class="poetry">About a church-door for a look at the bride,</p>
<p class="poetry">Although ‘twas herself that was married.</p>
<p class="poetry">To poets all Nature is pregnant with grand</p>
<p class="poetry">Ideas—with thought and emotion.</p>
<p class="poetry">I pity the dunces who don’t understand</p>
<p class="poetry">The speech of earth, heaven and ocean.</p>
<p class="citeauth">Stromboli Smith</p>
</div>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">ovation</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> n
ancient Rome, a definite, formal pageant in honor of one who had been
disserviceable to the enemies of the nation. A lesser “triumph.” In modern
English the word is improperly used to signify any loose and spontaneous
expression of popular homage to the hero of the hour and place.</p>

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">“I had an ovation!” the actor man said,</p>
<p class="poetry">But I thought it uncommonly queer,</p>
<p class="poetry">That people and critics by him had been led</p>
<p class="poetry">By the ear.</p>
<p class="poetry">The Latin lexicon makes his absurd</p>
<p class="poetry">Assertion as plain as a peg;</p>
<p class="poetry">In “ovum” we find the true root of the word.</p>
<p class="poetry">It means egg.</p>
<p class="citeauth">Dudley Spink</p>
</div>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">overeat</span>, <span class="pos">v.</span> To
dine.</p>

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">Hail, Gastronome, Apostle of Excess, Well skilled to overeat without distress!</p>
<p class="poetry">Thy great invention, the unfatal feast,</p>
<p class="poetry">Shows Man’s superiority to Beast.</p>
<p class="citeauth">John Boop</p>
</div>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">overwork</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A
dangerous disorder affecting high public functionaries who want to go fishing.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">owe</span>, <span class="pos">v.</span> To have
(and to hold) a debt. The word formerly signified not indebtedness, but possession;
it meant “own,” and in the minds of debtors there is still a good deal of
confusion between assets and liabilities.</p>

<p class="entry"><span class="def">oyster</span>, <span class="pos">n.</span> A
slimy, gobby shellfish which civilization gives men the hardihood to eat
without removing its entrails! The shells are sometimes given to the poor.</p>

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